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Like A Rock: The Chuck Cadman Story
Few B.C. books, if any, have ever generated such a national stir prior to publication as much as Tom Zytaruk's Like A Rock: The Chuck Cadman Story (Harbour $26.95). The Prime Minister of Canada launched a lawsuit against the Leader of the Opposition-the first time any PM has ever done so in office-due to accusations arising from the book.
The legal ruckus over chuck Cadman's story has arisen largely because the wife of the late Surrey MP, Dona Cadman-bizarrely, herself a candidate-to-be for the governing Conservatives-has verified biographer Tom Zytaruk's reportage that a bribe was offered to her dying husband by two representatives of Stephen Harper's Conservative party in May of 2005.
Tom Zytaruk writes on page 272: "Included in their proposal, she said, was a $1 million life insurance policy-no small carrot for a man with advanced cancer."; Dona Cadman reportedly told Zytaruk, "There was a few other things thrown in there, too, but it was the million-dollar policy that just pissed him right off.";
As the lone independent MP elected in the 2004 election, Cadman had the power to bring down the teetering Liberal administration of Prime Minister Paul Martin with his crucial swing vote. Allegedly repulsed by the blunt overtures made by the Conservatives, Cadman got off his death bed, having already lost 50 pounds, and dramatically voted with the Liberals on May 19, 2005, in a confidence vote on an amendment to the 2005 budget.
By saying "yea,"; creating a 152 to 152 tie in the vote, Cadman enabled Speaker Peter Milliken, a Liberal MP, to rise and break the tie in the government's favour. Never before had an independent MP ever wielded so much power in the House of Commons.
Only a few weeks later, at age 57, Cadman died of skin cancer in his Surrey home, revered as a local hero, and nationally admired for his unswerving dedication to revamp the Young Offenders Act and for his refusal to act outside the bounds of his conscience. More than 1,500 people attended his funeral at Johnston Heights Church on July 16, 2005.
Did Harper know about the offer of a financial incentive in 2005? Liberal leader Stéphane Dion has suggested he did-but Harper denies it. In tandem with the release of his thorough biography, Zytaruk, an award-winning reporter for the Now regional newspaper chain, has been circulating a tape recording of a somewhat ambiguous telephone conversation between himself and Harper that has fuelled the debate.
It all adds up to a story worthy of a movie, a movie that has already been made-twice.
In 1939, the Frank Capra drama Mr. Smith Goes to Washington starred James Stewart as an earnest political neophyte who turned the nation's capital on its head. In 2007, the CTV movie Elijah recalled how the Cree MLA Elijah Harper rose in the Manitoba legislature, holding an eagle feather, and rejected the Meech Lake Accord, thereby scuttling Prime Minister Brian Mulroney's hopes for ratification. Victim rights campaigner Chuck Cadman was the British Columbia version of that unsullied Everyman who ventures reluctantly into politics- staunchly independent-a venerable tradition that dates back to Cincinnatus, the honest man who twice rejected his role as the appointed dictator of the Roman Empire in order to return to his family farm.
-
Born in Ontario in 1948, Chuck Cadman spent several years as an aspiring rock music guitarist before the realities of family life led him to Surrey, commuting to an ICBC job in North Vancouver.
Then one night in 1992 he and his wife received a phone call from their 16-year-old son Jesse, asking for a ride home. He was advised to take the bus. Not long after that, while walking along the Fraser Highway with some friends, Jesse was senselessly stabbed to death by a chronic young offender, 16-year-old Isaac Deas, during an unprovoked attack.
Deas and several other drunk and stoned youths had stolen a pick-up that night, and Deas was wielding an 18-centimetre Japanese Tanto fighting knife he had stolen during a break-in. "The blade ran between the seventh and eighth ribs,"; Zytaruk writes, "cutting through Jesse's left lung and into his heart.";
After the funeral service that opened with a video about Jesse's life, set to the music of Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven,-a song Chuck had been teaching Jesse on the guitar-Cadman grew his trademark ponytail in honour of his son.
Some family friends have speculated that Chuck Cadman's resultant zeal to assert victims' rights and bring changes to the Young Offenders Act was born of guilt as much as grief, but he publicly maintained otherwise.
Cadman, his wife and their friends formed CRY, a lobbying group dedicated to addressing problems arising from Crime, Responsibility and Youth. CRY and similiar groups called for amendments to the Young Offenders Act that was introduced by Prime Minister Trudeau's Liberals in 1982 to replace the Juvenile Delinquents Act of 1908.
Also riled by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Cadman gathered thousands of signatures for petitions and spoke out in public. "The average Canadian,"; he said, "is now afraid to challenge, criticize or voice his opinion about anything for fear of being accused of racism, sexism, elitism, red-neckism or any other number of isms.";
CRY sent 400,000 letters to Ottawa. "Like a BC salmon fighting upstream against unrelenting currents and confounded by obstacles along the way,"; Zytaruk writes, "Chuck struggled to make distant Ottawa listen, only to be beaten back by disappointment.";
After Cadman's rising public profile caught the attention of Reform House Leader Randy White, "the original victim rights guy in the House of Commons,"; Cadman was elected as a Reform MP for Surrey North in 1997, then re-elected for the Canadian Alliance Party in 2000, becoming their Justice Critic.
Cadman lost the Conservative Party nomination in his riding to Jasbir Singh Cheema, a news anchor at Channel M in Vancouver, in 2004, but won the seat anyway, as an independent. His plainspoken appeal was hard-won, not a gimmick.
"I have been criticized for the length of my hair,"; he once said, "but I believe that it is what is in one's head that counts, not what is on it. As for my jeans, sneakers and sweatshirt, well, three-piece suits have governed this country for decades and I'm not overly impressed with the result.";
978-1-55017-427-4
[BCBW 2008]
The legal ruckus over chuck Cadman's story has arisen largely because the wife of the late Surrey MP, Dona Cadman-bizarrely, herself a candidate-to-be for the governing Conservatives-has verified biographer Tom Zytaruk's reportage that a bribe was offered to her dying husband by two representatives of Stephen Harper's Conservative party in May of 2005.
Tom Zytaruk writes on page 272: "Included in their proposal, she said, was a $1 million life insurance policy-no small carrot for a man with advanced cancer."; Dona Cadman reportedly told Zytaruk, "There was a few other things thrown in there, too, but it was the million-dollar policy that just pissed him right off.";
As the lone independent MP elected in the 2004 election, Cadman had the power to bring down the teetering Liberal administration of Prime Minister Paul Martin with his crucial swing vote. Allegedly repulsed by the blunt overtures made by the Conservatives, Cadman got off his death bed, having already lost 50 pounds, and dramatically voted with the Liberals on May 19, 2005, in a confidence vote on an amendment to the 2005 budget.
By saying "yea,"; creating a 152 to 152 tie in the vote, Cadman enabled Speaker Peter Milliken, a Liberal MP, to rise and break the tie in the government's favour. Never before had an independent MP ever wielded so much power in the House of Commons.
Only a few weeks later, at age 57, Cadman died of skin cancer in his Surrey home, revered as a local hero, and nationally admired for his unswerving dedication to revamp the Young Offenders Act and for his refusal to act outside the bounds of his conscience. More than 1,500 people attended his funeral at Johnston Heights Church on July 16, 2005.
Did Harper know about the offer of a financial incentive in 2005? Liberal leader Stéphane Dion has suggested he did-but Harper denies it. In tandem with the release of his thorough biography, Zytaruk, an award-winning reporter for the Now regional newspaper chain, has been circulating a tape recording of a somewhat ambiguous telephone conversation between himself and Harper that has fuelled the debate.
It all adds up to a story worthy of a movie, a movie that has already been made-twice.
In 1939, the Frank Capra drama Mr. Smith Goes to Washington starred James Stewart as an earnest political neophyte who turned the nation's capital on its head. In 2007, the CTV movie Elijah recalled how the Cree MLA Elijah Harper rose in the Manitoba legislature, holding an eagle feather, and rejected the Meech Lake Accord, thereby scuttling Prime Minister Brian Mulroney's hopes for ratification. Victim rights campaigner Chuck Cadman was the British Columbia version of that unsullied Everyman who ventures reluctantly into politics- staunchly independent-a venerable tradition that dates back to Cincinnatus, the honest man who twice rejected his role as the appointed dictator of the Roman Empire in order to return to his family farm.
-
Born in Ontario in 1948, Chuck Cadman spent several years as an aspiring rock music guitarist before the realities of family life led him to Surrey, commuting to an ICBC job in North Vancouver.
Then one night in 1992 he and his wife received a phone call from their 16-year-old son Jesse, asking for a ride home. He was advised to take the bus. Not long after that, while walking along the Fraser Highway with some friends, Jesse was senselessly stabbed to death by a chronic young offender, 16-year-old Isaac Deas, during an unprovoked attack.
Deas and several other drunk and stoned youths had stolen a pick-up that night, and Deas was wielding an 18-centimetre Japanese Tanto fighting knife he had stolen during a break-in. "The blade ran between the seventh and eighth ribs,"; Zytaruk writes, "cutting through Jesse's left lung and into his heart.";
After the funeral service that opened with a video about Jesse's life, set to the music of Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven,-a song Chuck had been teaching Jesse on the guitar-Cadman grew his trademark ponytail in honour of his son.
Some family friends have speculated that Chuck Cadman's resultant zeal to assert victims' rights and bring changes to the Young Offenders Act was born of guilt as much as grief, but he publicly maintained otherwise.
Cadman, his wife and their friends formed CRY, a lobbying group dedicated to addressing problems arising from Crime, Responsibility and Youth. CRY and similiar groups called for amendments to the Young Offenders Act that was introduced by Prime Minister Trudeau's Liberals in 1982 to replace the Juvenile Delinquents Act of 1908.
Also riled by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Cadman gathered thousands of signatures for petitions and spoke out in public. "The average Canadian,"; he said, "is now afraid to challenge, criticize or voice his opinion about anything for fear of being accused of racism, sexism, elitism, red-neckism or any other number of isms.";
CRY sent 400,000 letters to Ottawa. "Like a BC salmon fighting upstream against unrelenting currents and confounded by obstacles along the way,"; Zytaruk writes, "Chuck struggled to make distant Ottawa listen, only to be beaten back by disappointment.";
After Cadman's rising public profile caught the attention of Reform House Leader Randy White, "the original victim rights guy in the House of Commons,"; Cadman was elected as a Reform MP for Surrey North in 1997, then re-elected for the Canadian Alliance Party in 2000, becoming their Justice Critic.
Cadman lost the Conservative Party nomination in his riding to Jasbir Singh Cheema, a news anchor at Channel M in Vancouver, in 2004, but won the seat anyway, as an independent. His plainspoken appeal was hard-won, not a gimmick.
"I have been criticized for the length of my hair,"; he once said, "but I believe that it is what is in one's head that counts, not what is on it. As for my jeans, sneakers and sweatshirt, well, three-piece suits have governed this country for decades and I'm not overly impressed with the result.";
978-1-55017-427-4
[BCBW 2008]
Submitted on June 3, 2008 in By David.
